Friday, December 21, 2007

Happy Birthday Snow White

The film premiered at the Carthay Circle Theater in Hollywood on the night of December 21, 1937 and this year celebrates its 70th anniversary. "All the Hollywood brass turned out for my cartoon!" remembered Walt years later, "That was the thing. And it went way back to when I first came out here and I went to my first premiere. I'd never seen one in my life. I saw all these Hollywood celebrities coming in and I just had a funny feeling. I just hoped that some day they'd be going in to a premiere of a cartoon. Because people would depreciate the cartoon. You know, they'd kind of look down." Those celebrities included Marlene Dietrich, Preston Foster, Shirley Temple, Bob "Bazooka" Burns, Charles Correll and Freeman Gosden (Amos and Andy), Joe Penner, Helen Vincent, Fred Perry, George McCall, Charlie Chaplin with Paulette Goddard, Gail Patrick , Ed Sullivan, Clark Gable and Carol Lombard, Norma Shearer, Judy Garland, Charles Laughton and Elsa Lanchester, Jack Benny, Burns and Allen, Cary Grant and many more.